Year: 2024
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Saint Matthew Today for May 1, 2024
Categories: Print Copy
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2420 – Living as a Prophet
Categories: Video
Watch the full service on our YouTube channel by clicking here.
Isaiah 1:15-20 Common English Bible
15 When you extend your hands,
I’ll hide my eyes from you.
Even when you pray for a long time,
I won’t listen.
Your hands are stained with blood.
16 Wash! Be clean!
Remove your ugly deeds from my sight.
Put an end to such evil;
17 learn to do good.
Seek justice:
help the oppressed;[a]
defend the orphan;
plead for the widow.18 Come now, and let’s settle this,
says the Lord.
Though your sins are like scarlet,
they will be white as snow.
If they are red as crimson,
they will become like wool.
19 If you agree and obey,
you will eat the best food of the land.
20 But if you refuse and rebel,
you will be devoured by the sword.
The Lord has said this.
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Friday’s Word
Categories: Friday WordNo Bowls of Wrath
I remember an old Nichols and May routine from the 60s.
Mike Nichols played a man desperate to make a call on his one and only dime. Elaine May was the telephone operator.
He said to her, “Please don’t jiggle something with your elbow and make me lose my dime.”
She replied, “Sir, we don’t work with our elbows.”
I heard a preacher reading from Revelation the other day—the lines about God pouring bowls of wrath on humankind.
God doesn’t work with bowls of wrath.
I used to play the preacher game: Try to find something good to say about Revelation.
It’s in the Bible! It’s part of the canon!
Yes—and a theologically useless book. Tell it like it is. It’s a mess.
And it was not written by the author of the gospel and letters of John.
Unlike them, it is written in very poor Greek.
The worst thing about Revelation is that it contradicts the teaching of Jesus that we are to love our enemies for God loves his enemies.
In Revelation, God hates his enemies and treats them with unspeakable cruelty.
Like pouring bowls of wrath on them.
It has Jesus riding in on a white horse cutting off the heads of sinners.
We all know what Jesus does. He dies for sinners. All of us.
It is impossible to affirm the content of Revelation and also affirm what Jesus taught us about God.
The God we know in Christ is the only God there is. And God doesn’t work with bowls of wrath.
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Special Giving Week.
Help with Friday’s Word.
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Max’s Corner
Categories: NewsA Tour Through History
Connie (Owensby) Eley reminds me I left out a lot of the joy in my run through the history of our congregation’s 128 years. That youth group in the late 60s and early 70s filled two rows in church every week. Her brother, our beloved Hubert Owensby, who passed last year, was a youth leader.
I also neglected to tell you that the folks still here in the early 80s when I came as pastor were fiercely loyal to this church—and very proud of St. Matthew.
This church has survived on love.
But I also wanted you to know that love alone won’t do it if we have no way to reach out to the world with that love.
Friday’s Word (or something like it) is still absolutely essential to the ongoing life of this church. We have lost a lot of people through death in the last three years. If you omit from our congregation the people we have gained through Friday’s Word during that time, we would have to be considered a dying church.
Why?—because we would be.
As long as we think of this as “Max’s project,” we are missing the point. This is our project.
Many once-large churches are gone from the East Side. We are still here. Let us give thanks.
Breakfast this Sunday
A “Bring It Sunday.” I’ll bring something.
Let’s have breakfast together—10:30 a.m.
Sunday’s Sermon
Sermon Sunday: That Great Getting’ Up Mornin’
I may sing a solo—if no one stops me.
Special Giving Sunday
You may give extra this Sunday if you are able. If you are not able, do not do so. The Lord will provide.
God Bless—MB
Prayer for our members who are ill. We miss you and think of you often. Our love to Tracy Maxwell.
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Mary’s Corner
Categories: NewsGreetings to you in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord,
Sunday was a very tender day for many of us. It was a day of profound grief and immeasurable joy. I have discovered that both emotions bring me to tears and so Sunday was a very, very tender day. I was not alone in shedding tears of sadness over the loss of Julie M. Julie and Tracy have been a major force in our church, always generous with their time and talents. And, I saw many of you with “leaking eyes” when Anna and Tyler stood at the back as evidence of God’s miracles in our lives. Our family is forever grateful to you for your prayers and for those of you able to sit vigil as Anna healed from her illness.
It is strange to be in the “bittersweet” as we were yesterday, but I am wondering if we are not always living there. We never lose the grief that accompanies loss in our lives and we can always find a miracle in our lives if we look close enough. I think that is what being Easter People means. We are able to see the miracle in the presence of great sorrow. We can do so because we are God’s beloved children and we are never alone no matter where the pendulum is swinging.
I enjoyed Max’s history lesson on Sunday. It is wonderful to belong to a congregation with so much history. And I am thankful that a newspaper article is the beginning for many folks. I also know that even if the newspaper brings people in, it is you, our loving and caring congregation, who keep people coming back. Saint Matthew has been revived several times in its history and we may face the need for a more modern intervention soon. But, the heart of our Lord joined to the heart of all of you keeps this church alive.
I am one of those “newspaper” people who wandered into St. Matthew after seeing the Meadowbrook News. But it isn’t any newspaper that keeps me coming back. It isn’t even my job there as associate pastor. I keep coming back, my family keeps coming back because of you. We love you dearly, Mary.